16 August 2015 - Jessica's Birthday Outdoors

To celebrate Jessica's birthday, Grandma and Grandpa Phil rented two cabins near Jordanelle Reservoir between Heber and Park City. We took the boat out one day on Deer Creek and the next day on Jordanelle. The second day, the girls all learned to water ski. This is Jessica...

Emily...

and Madeline...

Of course there was some aggressive tube riding too.

At the cabins on Monday night, Jessica opened presents. She got Minion Twinkies from Aunt Jen.

And a mushroom pinata from mommy.

Phil proved he can still cut up the water at age 65.

I can still do it too, but 20+ years younger. I can only hope I can still do this 20 years from now.

After a couple of days in the mountains, we came back down to Orem. It turned out that our good friends from Pennsylvania were in town visiting family for the summer. Emily and Madeline had been especially good friends with Emma Stephens, so we got the kids together to play a couple of times.

This is us with Emma's mom Ashley.

One of the things we were able to do with them was a trip to Rock Canyon behind the Provo Temple where we spent a morning rappelling. Here is Grandpa Phil and Grandma taking a turn after all the kids had taken several rides down the rope.

On Saturday we also re-connected with Michael and Shauna Cleverly who are friends of ours from college. Michael and I were in the MTC together and though we were never companions we crossed paths regularly on our missions. We also roomed together at BYU before Michael and Shauna got married. It's been a long time since we've had time to get together, and it was awesome to get caught up. It was almost like we picked up where we left off more than a decade ago.